PAUL DICKOV COLUMN: I’m delighted with our January window shopping

The transfer window ends today and I’m really happy with the business that we have done - although as a manager, January is a horrible time of year!

It’s a time when you dread answering your phone - which is constantly ringing - because you hope it’s not a club asking for one of your players.

You also have hundreds of calls from agents trying to get involved and trying to make something up to put the pressure on and get a part of the deal which is something managers have to cope with.

But I’m very happy with how we’ve handled things. We wanted to get deals done quickly so we could get the players in and settled and that goes for the ones who have left the club too.

We are certainly not looking for any ins or outs at the moment.

People will talk about Billy Sharp coming back which is a fantastic coup for us. He was someone who we had been working on for a long time. Initially Southampton didn’t show a lot of encouragement because they were having a lot of changes behind the scenes with their manager so we just had to keep badgering them.

Once the changes were made at Southampton, we managed to get the deal done.

Then there’s Abdoulaye Meite who had been training with us and someone who we wanted to get signed up but we had to wait until January. Thankfully that deal went through and the Gabby Tamas one followed.

Gabby was someone we had been hoping to sign in the summer but the possibility of him playing Champions League football for FC Cluj was a big draw for him so we had to be patient.

The big one for me was re-signing Richie Wellens. He has a lot of respect, not just from his team-mates, but from other teams as well so it was really important for us to keep Richie.

When you sign players of that calibre it is easier to get other players. If you’re trying to sign players and they see the captain of the club walking away for nothing, then it becomes a lot more difficult to get people in.

Players will worry about the ambition of the team and the manager’s if you let people like Richie go so that was a bit of a turning point for us. It’s fantastic to have him on an 18-month deal at Doncaster.

Overall, I’m really pleased with the deals that we have done here during this transfer window.